Lewisham Council has been criticised in a report by the National Audit Office for allowing the cost of the Brockley PFI scheme to improve the area's Council-owned housing stock to spiral out of control.

The Evening Standard reports that the Brockley scheme is one of six to be singled out, after the cost rose from £44.6 million to £115.91 million.

The Standard quotes a Lewisham spokesperson as saying:

“The change in cost was required because many of the properties in the Brockley PFI area required a high level of investment.”

Which is a pretty flimsy explanation, given that the condition of the stock would be one of the fundamental issues in pricing any contract.

The Brockley PFI scheme has been riddled with problems since it began and local resident Patrick McGinley has been leading a campaign to try and hold the Council more accountable for the way it manages the project. We've interviewed him on the subject but have been shamefully slack in publishing an article. More soon.

Many of us have bought our properties on the open market and have Lewisham as the landlords - we paid full market rates.

Of those that did buy via the Right to Buy scheme,many are pensioners who scraped together enough to buy the property and had no knowledge at the time that Lewisham would subcontract out their responsibilities to the PFI with no redress to the leaseholders. Can you not feel any compassion for pensioner leaseholders who now have to pay £10,000 to the PFi over 2 years for substandard and unnecessary works? This would be difficult for salaried people to achieve but as a pensioner....

BTW to the Lewisham council spokesperson who talks about a higher level of investment needed: originally the PFI budgeted for replacing all the windows in all properties and the doors; in the conservation area they were not allowed to do this (savings) and they didnt go through with the doors in other areas (savings). Perhaps the real spiraling costs came thorugh the delay to start the project and some inept negotaitons at the council; but it didnt come from the work put into the homes.

Yes, if all are leaseholders - then that would work well. But in block properties, and soemtimes street properties, there are sometimes council tenants in the other flats, which means the freehold can't be taken over.

Councils all over London seem inept at keeping building costs down. They constantly seem to be taken for a ride by builders and repair people. Look at Clissold Leisure Centre in Hackney, it opened hugely over budget, massively late and then closed 2 years later because the roof was already leaking and the building was essentially falling apart!

PFI complete waste of money. it would have cost half as much if it had been done by the council. Tis like the PFI hospitals you pay a massive rent over twenty five years for hospitals which turns out more than it would have cost to build the hospital and at the end of the twenty five years you don't own anything and they can put a massive increase in the cost of renting the hopsital and you will have no choice but to take it.complete rip off.

PFI complete waste of money. it would have cost half as much if it had been done by the council. Tis like the PFI hospitals you pay a massive rent over twenty five years for hospitals which turns out more than it would have cost to build the hospital and at the end of the twenty five years you don't own anything and they can put a massive increase in the cost of renting the hopsital and you will have no choice but to take it.complete rip off.

None of this is news to Brockley leaseholders, who know only too well that the PFI is an absolute rip-off. It's true the tories started it, but the labour government took it to the next level, as it allowed Gordon Brown to hide the massive debt off the balance sheet and then claim he'd kept his 'golden rule' about borrowing.

For Lewisham council to claim that any of this was due to unforeseen circumstances is laughable. They took years trying to put it in place. The PFI is basically Lewisham selling off the right to exploit the leaseholders, doing work that isn't necessary and not doing work that is. The private companies are coining it in.